Starvecrow Farm Part 28

That was enough for her. She felt for it, found it, and without thought of him or word to him, she climbed nimbly in. That done she stooped and drew the chair up, and closed the window down upon him and secured it. Next, feeling for the door of Mr. Rogers's room she got rid of the chair, and seized her hidden candle and crept out and up the stairs. Apparently all the house, save the man who had detected her, slept. But she did not dare to pause or prove the fact. She had had her lesson and a severe one; and she did not breathe freely until the door of her chamber was locked behind her, and she knew herself once more within the bounds of the usual and the proper.

Then for a brief while, as she tore off her damp clothes, her thoughts ran stormily on Mr. Sutton: nor did she dream, or he, from what things he had saved her. The man was a wretch, a spy, a sneak trying to worm himself into her confidence. She would box his ears if he threatened her or referred to the matter again. And if he told others--she did not know what she would not do! For the rest, she had let herself be scared by a nothing, by a step, by a sound; and she despised herself for her cowardice. But--she had that consolation--she had played her part, she had gone to the rendezvous, she had not failed. The fault lay with him who should have met her there, and who had not met her.

And so, shivering and chilled--for bedroom fires were not yet, and she was worn out with fright and exposure--she hid herself under the heavy patchwork quilt and sought comfort in the sleep of exhaustion. It was not long in coming, for she suspected no more than she knew. Like the purblind insect that creeps upon the crowded pavement and is missed by a hundred feet, she discerned neither the dangers which she had so narrowly escaped, nor those into which her late action was fated to hurry her.

CHAPTER XVII

THE EDGE OF THE STORM

It was daylight when she awoke; but it had not been daylight long. Yet some one was knocking; and knocking loudly at the door of her bedroom.

She rose on her elbow, and looking at the half-curtained window decided that it was eight o'clock, perhaps a little later. But not so much later that they need raise the house in waking her.

"Thank you," she cried petulantly. "That will do! That will do! I am awake." And she laid her head on the pillow again, and closing her eyes, sighed deeply. The events of the night were coming back to her--and with them her troubles.

But, "Please to open the door, miss!" came the answer in gruff accents. "I want to speak to you, by your leave."

Henrietta sat up, her hair straggling from under the nightcap that framed her pretty features. The voice that demanded entrance was Mrs.

Gilson's: and even over Henrietta that voice had power. She parleyed no longer. She threw a wrap about her, and hastily opened the door.

"What is it?" she asked. "Mrs. Gilson, is it you?"

"Be good enough," the landlady answered, "to let me come in a minute, miss."

Her peremptory tone astonished Henrietta, who said neither Yes nor No, but stood staring. The landlady with little ceremony took leave for granted. She entered, went by the girl to the window, and dragging the curtains aside, let in the full light. The adventures of the night had left Henrietta pale. But at this her colour rose.

"What is it?" she repeated.

"You know best," Mrs. Gilson answered with more than her usual curtness. "Deal of dirt and little profit, I'm afraid, like Brough March fair! It's not enough to be a fool once, it seems! Though I'd have thought you'd paid pretty smartly for it. Smart enough to know better now, my la.s.s!"

"I don't know what you mean," Henrietta faltered.

"You don't?" Mrs. Gilson rejoined, and with her arms set akimbo she stared severely at the girl, who, in her night-clothes with her cloak thrown about her and her colour coming and going, looked both guilty and frightened. "I fancy your face knows, if you don't. Where were you last night? Ay, after dark last night, madam? Where were you, I say?"

"After dark?" Henrietta stammered.

"Ay, after dark!" the landlady retorted. "That's English, isn't it?

But never mind. Least said is soonest mended. Where are your shoes?"

"My shoes?"

Mrs. Gilson lost patience, or appeared to lose it.

"That is what I said," she replied. "You give them to me, and then I'll tell you why I want them. Ah!" catching sight of them and bending her stout form to lift them from the floor. "Now, if you want to know what is the matter, though I think you know as well as the miller knows who beats the meal sack--you come with me! There is no one on this landing. Come you, as you are, to the window at the other end.

'And you'll know fast enough, and why they want your shoes."

"They?" Henrietta murmured, hanging back and growing more alarmed. It was a pity that there was no man there to see how pretty she looked in her disorder.

"Ay, they!" the landlady answered. And a keen ear might have detected sorrow as well as displeasure in her tone. "There's many will be poking their noses into your affairs now you'll find--when it's too late to prevent them. But do you come, young woman!" She led the way along the landing to a window which looked down on the side-garden.

After a brief hesitation Henrietta followed, her face grown sullen.

Alas! when she reached the window it needed but a look to enlighten her.

One of the things, which she had feared the previous day, had come to pa.s.s! A little snow had fallen while she was absent from the house; so very little that she had not noticed it. But it had lain, and on its white surface was published this morning in d.a.m.ning characters the story of her flittings to and fro. And worse, early as it was, the story had readers! Leaning on the garden wicket were two or three men discussing the appearances, and pointing and arguing; and forty or fifty yards along the road towards Bowness, a man, bent double, was tracing the prints of her feet, as if he followed a scent.

It was for that, then, that they wanted her shoes. She understood, and her first impulse was to indignation. It was an outrage! An insult!

"What is it to them?" she cried. "How dare they!"

Mrs. Gilson looked keenly at her under her vast bushy eyebrows.

"I'm afraid," she said, "that you'll find they'll dare a mort more than that before they've done, my girl. And what they want to know they'll learn. These," coolly lifting the shoes to sight, "are to help them."

"But why should they--what is it to them if I----" she stopped, unwilling to commit herself.

"You listen to me a minute," the landlady said. "You've brought your pigs to a poor market, that's plain: and there is but one thing can help you now, and that is a clean breast. Now you make up your mind to it! There's nought else can help you, I say again, and that I tell you! It's no child's play, this! The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, as they say at the a.s.sizes, is the only thing for you, if you don't want to be sorry for it all the rest of your life."

She spoke so seriously that Henrietta when she answered took a lower tone; though she still protested.

"What is it to any one," she asked, "if I was out of the house last night?"

"It's little to me," Mrs. Gilson answered drily. "But it will be much to you if you don't tell the truth. Your own conscience, my girl, should speak loud enough."

"My conscience is clear!" Henrietta cried. But her tone, a little too heroic, fitted ill with her appearance.

At any rate Mrs. Gilson, who did not like heroics, thought so. "Then the best thing you can do," she replied tartly, "is to go and dress yourself! A clear conscience! Umph! Give me clean hands! And if I were you I'd be quite sure about that conscience before I came down to answer questions."

"I shall not come down."

"Then they'll come up," the landlady retorted. "And 'twon't be more pleasant. You'd best think twice about that."

Henrietta was thinking. Behind the sullen, pretty face she was thinking that if she made a clean breast of it, she must betray the man. She must say where she had seen him, and why she had gone to meet him. And that was the thing which she had resolved not to do--the thing which she was still determined not to do. There is a spice of obstinacy in all women: an inclination to abide by a line once taken, or an opinion once formed. And Henrietta, who was naturally head-strong, and who had run some risk the previous night and gone to some trouble that the man might escape, was not going to give him up to-day. They had found her out, they had driven her to bay. But nothing which they could do would wound her half as much as that public ordeal, that confrontation with the man, that exhibition of his unworthiness and her folly, which must follow his capture. For the man himself, she was so far from loving him, that she loathed him, she was ashamed of him. But she was not going to betray him. She was not going to turn informer--a name more hateful then, when blood-money was common, than now! She who had been kissed by him was not going to have his blood on her hands!

Such were her thoughts; to which Mrs. Gilson had no clue. But the landlady read recalcitrancy in the girl's face, and knowing some things which Henrietta did not know, and being at no time one to brook opposition, she took the girl the wrong way. If she had appealed to her better feelings, if she had used that influence with her which rough but real kindness had won, it is possible that she might have brought Henrietta to reason. But the sight of that sullen, pretty face provoked the landlady. She had proof of gross indiscretion, she suspected worse things, she thought the girl unworthy. And she spoke more harshly to her than she had ever spoken before.

"If you were my girl," she said grimly, "I'd know what to do with you!

I'd shake the humours out of you, if I had to shake you from now till next week! Ay, I would! And you'd pretty soon come to your senses and find your tongue, I warrant! Didn't you pretend to me and maintain to me a week ago and more that you'd done with the scamp?"

"I have done with him!" Henrietta cried, red and angry.

"Ay, as the foot has done with the shoe--till next time!" Mrs. Gilson retorted, drawing her simile from the articles in her hand. "For shame. For shame, young woman!" severely. "When it was trusting to that I kept you here and kept you out of gaol!"

Henrietta had not thought of that side of the case; and the reminder, finding a joint in her armour, stung her.

"You don't know to whom you are talking!" she cried.

"I know that I am talking to a fool!" the landlady retorted. "But there," she continued irefully, "you may talk to a fool till you are dead and 'twill still be a fool! So it's only one bit of advice I'll give you. You dress and come down or you'll be dragged down! And I suppose, though you are not too proud to trapse the roads to meet your Joe--ay," raising her voice as Henrietta turned in a rage, and fled, "you may slam the door, you little vixen, for a vixen you are! But you've heard some of my opinion of you, and you'll hear more! I'm not sure that you're not a thorough bad 'un!" Mrs. Gilson continued, lowering her voice again and speaking to herself--though her words were still audible. "That I'm not! But any way there'll be one here by-and-by you'll have to listen to! And he'll make your ears burn, my lady, or I'm mistaken!"

It was bad enough to hear through the ill-fitting door such words as these. It was worse to know that plainer words might be used downstairs in the hearing of man and maid. But Henrietta had the sense to know that her position would be made worse by avoiding the issue, and pride enough to urge her to face it. She hastened to dress herself, though her fingers shook with indignation as well as with cold.